Jaw-Dropping Simulation Shows Stars Shredded as They Get Too Close to a Black Hole

A simulation of a star disrupted by a black hole. (NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Taeho Ryu)

MICHELLE STARR

29 NOVEMBER 2021

We just got a little more insight into stellar death by black hole.

In a series of simulations, a team of astrophysicists has chucked a bunch of stars at a range of black holes, and recorded what happens.

It's the first study of its kind, the scientists said, that combines Einstein's theory of general relativity with realistic models of the densities of main-sequence stars. The results will help us understand what is happening when we observe the flares of light from distant black holes shredding unfortunate stars.

And the simulations, supporting a paper that was published last year, are also gorgeous as heck.

When a star ventures a little too close to a black hole, things turn violent pretty quickly. The extreme gravitational field of the black hole starts deforming and then pulling the star apart, due to what we call tidal forces – the stretching of one body due to the gravitational pull of another.

When a star gets so close to a black hole that the tidal force results in material being stripped from the star, we call that a tidal disruption event

In the worst-case scenario for the star, there's no escape. The disruption is total, and some of the star's material gets slurped down onto the black hole like a spaghetti noodle.

But not every encounter between a black hole and a star ends this way. Some stars have been observed surviving. The simulations, led by astrophysicist Taeho Ryu of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, were designed to find out what factors contributed to a star's survival.

The team created six virtual black holes, with masses between 100,000 and 50 million times that of the Sun. Each of these black holes then had encounters with eight main-sequence stars, with masses between 0.15 and 10 times that of the Sun.

They found that the main factor that contributed to a star's survival was the initial density of the star. The denser the star, the more likely it is to survive an encounter with a black hole. In the video above, you can see these encounters play out around a supermassive black hole 1 million times the Sun's mass. The stars with the highest density are yellow, and the lowest are blue.

The team also found that partial disruptions occur at the same rate as total disruptions, and the proportion of the star's mass that is lost can be described surprisingly easily using a simple expression.

Future research to fill in the finer details will help model the effects of these encounters, including the heretofore relatively neglected partial disruption events, the researchers said.

This will reveal what can happen to a star after it survives an encounter with a black hole; whether it continues along the main sequence, or turns into a stellar remnant; and if it will continue in orbit around the black hole to meet total disruption at a later date.

The paper accompanying the simulations was published in The Astrophysical Journal in 2020.

Nerve Cell That Science Thought Didn't Exist Discovered In Heart

By Katie Spalding

26 NOV 2021, 

How many brains do you have? It may seem like an easy question – but ask a biologist, and you might be surprised by what they say. See, there’s actually a whole bunch of brains in our bodies: specifically, the “mini brains” of our organs – vast neuronal networks that send and receive information to that big wrinkly lump in our skulls.

Of course, there are a few differences between those “mini brains” and our actual brain. For one thing, our actual brain is chock-full of star-shaped multitasking cells called astrocytes. These cells play a crucial role in building and maintaining neural networks in the brain and spine, but aren’t thought to live anywhere else in the body – which is weird, right? If they’re so important, why wouldn’t they be found in other places too?

Well, according to a new study published recently in the journal PLOS BIOLOGY, they are. In a discovery that surprised even the researchers responsible, a new type of cell resembling astrocytes has been found in the heart. Dubbed “nexus glia” because of their net-like appearance around the heart, the team behind the discovery believe these new cells may hold the key to how we understand heart disease and defects in the future.

“For me the definition of great science is something that you discover that opens up even more questions,” said study co-author Cody Smith. “This, I think, is the definition of that.”

Astrocytes belong to a class of cells known as glial cells – the name comes the Greek for “glue,” the only function the 19th-century neurologists who discovered the cells were able to ascertain for them. These days, we know a bit more about glial cells, but not everything – we know they can be found throughout the body, including organs like the pancreas, spleen, lungs, and intestines, for instance, but we don’t know precisely what they do there.

Neither is it clear why astrocytes in particular, so crucial to neuron function in the brain, seem basically non-existent in the peripheral nervous system (PNS) – that is, the parts of the body connected by nerves outside of the brain and spinal cord.

“We were puzzled,” Smith explained, “so we searched for glial like cells in the PNS.”

“Really, [first author] Nina Kikel-Coury searched!” he added. “Nina came to my office every week with more data that supported a glial identity, many of which I was admittedly unconvinced by … Eventually the data became too much to dismiss.”

To begin with, the team looked at zebrafish – an animal that’s rapidly become the guinea pig of choice for scientists modeling diseases in recent years. They discovered a type of cell in the zebrafish heart that seemed to behave like astrocytes – and cross-species analysis revealed the same cells in human and mouse hearts. Formed before birth from the same group of cells that eventually go on to build our faces and smooth muscles, the cells spread out through the heart from the outflow tracts – and that provided an important clue as to the nexus glia’s function.

“’This is fascinating because the outflow tract is defective in 30% congenital heart diseases’ Nina explained … Scoring heart beats she noticed increased heart rates when nexus glia were disrupted,” wrote Smith.

What’s more, when the nexus glia were deprived of a key glial development gene, the heartbeat became irregular. “I thought that if we could find a new cellular piece to the cardiovascular puzzle, it could be foundational for future work,” explained Kikel-Coury.

As with so many discoveries of this nature, the full implications are yet to be seen. While Smith thinks the nexus glia “could play a pretty important role in regulating the heart,” he cautioned that they “don’t completely know” their precise function yet.

“[We now] have 100 questions we didn’t even know existed, so we’re following up on them to explore this path that has never been studied before,” said Smith. “This is another example of how studying basic neurobiology can lead to the understanding of many different disorders … I’m excited about the future.”

 

Weekly exposure to deep red light in the morning can improve declining vision

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Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Nov 24 2021

Just three minutes of exposure to deep red light once a week, when delivered in the morning, can significantly improve declining eyesight, finds a pioneering new study by UCL researchers.

Published in Scientific Reports, the study builds on the team's previous work, which showed daily three-minute exposure to longwave deep red light 'switched on' energy producing mitochondria cells in the human retina, helping boost naturally declining vision.

For this latest study, scientists wanted to establish what effect a single three-minute exposure would have, while also using much lower energy levels than their previous studies. Furthermore, building on separate UCL research in flies that found mitochondria display 'shifting workloads' depending on the time of day, the team compared morning exposure to afternoon exposure.

In summary, researchers found there was, on average, a 17% improvement in participants' colour contrast vision when exposed to three minutes of 670 nanometre (long wavelength) deep red light in the morning and the effects of this single exposure lasted for at least a week. However, when the same test was conducted in the afternoon, no improvement was seen.

Scientists say the benefits of deep red light, highlighted by the findings, mark a breakthrough for eye health and should lead to affordable home-based eye therapies, helping the millions of people globally with naturally declining vision.

We demonstrate that one single exposure to long wave deep red light in the morning can significantly improve declining vision, which is a major health and wellbeing issue, affecting millions of people globally.

This simple intervention applied at the population level would significantly impact on quality of life as people age and would likely result in reduced social costs that arise from problems associated with reduced vision."

Glen Jeffery, Lead Author, Professor, UCL Institute of Ophthalmology

Naturally declining vision and mitochondria

In humans around 40 years old, cells in the eye's retina begin to age, and the pace of this ageing is caused, in part, when the cell's mitochondria, whose role is to produce energy (known as ATP) and boost cell function, also start to decline.

Mitochondrial density is greatest in the retina's photoreceptor cells, which have high energy demands. As a result, the retina ages faster than other organs, with a 70% ATP reduction over life, causing a significant decline in photoreceptor function as they lack the energy to perform their normal role.

In studying the effects of deep red light in humans, researchers built on their previous findings in mice, bumblebees and fruit flies, which all found significant improvements in the function of the retina's photoreceptors when their eyes were exposed to 670 nanometre (long wavelength) deep red light.

"Mitochondria have specific sensitivities to long wavelength light influencing their performance: longer wavelengths spanning 650 to 900nm improve mitochondrial performance to increase energy production," said Professor Jeffery.

Morning and afternoon studies

The retina's photoreceptor population is formed of cones, which mediate colour vision, and rods, which adapt vision in low/dim light. This study focused on cones and observed colour contrast sensitivity, along the protan axis (measuring red-green contrast) and the tritan axis (blue-yellow).

All the participants were aged between 34 and 70, had no ocular disease, completed a questionnaire regarding eye health prior to testing, and had normal colour vision (cone function). This was assessed using a 'Chroma Test': identifying coloured letters that had very low contrast and appeared increasingly blurred, a process called colour contrast.

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Using a provided LED device all 20 participants (13 female and 7 male) were exposed to three minutes of 670nm deep red light in the morning between 8am and 9am. Their colour vision was then tested again three hours post exposure and 10 of the participants were also tested one week post exposure.

On average there was a 'significant' 17% improvement in colour vision, which lasted a week in tested participants; in some older participants there was a 20% improvement, also lasting a week.

A few months on from the first test (ensuring any positive effects of the deep red light had been 'washed out') six (three female, three male) of the 20 participants, carried out the same test in the afternoon, between 12pm to 1pm. When participants then had their colour vision tested again, it showed zero improvement.

Professor Jeffery said: "Using a simple LED device once a week, recharges the energy system that has declined in the retina cells, rather like re-charging a battery.

"And morning exposure is absolutely key to achieving improvements in declining vision: as we have previously seen in flies, mitochondria have shifting work patterns and do not respond in the same way to light in the afternoon – this study confirms this."

For this study the light energy emitted by the LED torch was just 8mW/cm2, rather than 40mW/cm2, which they had previously used. This has the effect of dimming the light but does not affect the wavelength. While both energy levels are perfectly safe for the human eye, reducing the energy further is an additional benefit.

Home-based affordable eye therapies

With a paucity of affordable deep red-light eye-therapies available, Professor Jeffery has been working for no commercial gain with Planet Lighting UK, a small company in Wales and others, with the aim of producing 670nm infra-red eye ware at an affordable cost, in contrast to some other LED devices designed to improve vision available in the US for over $20,000.

"The technology is simple and very safe; the energy delivered by 670nm long wave light is not that much greater than that found in natural environmental light," Professor Jeffery said.

"Given its simplicity, I am confident an easy-to-use device can be made available at an affordable cost to the general public.

"In the near future, a once a week three-minute exposure to deep red light could be done while making a coffee, or on the commute listening to a podcast, and such a simple addition could transform eye care and vision around the world."

Study limitations

Despite the clarity of the results, researchers say some of the data are "noisy". While positive effects are clear for individuals following 670nm exposure, the magnitude of improvements can vary markedly between those of similar ages. Therefore, some caution is needed in interpretating the data. It is possible that there are other variables between individuals that influence the degree of improvement that the researchers have not identified so far and would require a larger sample size.

This research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, and Sight Research UK.

To help meet the costs of this research and future research, Professor Glen Jeffery's Lab at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology receives donations via UCL's Give Now platform.

Source:

University College London

Journal reference:

Shinhmar, H., et al. (2021) Weeklong improved colour contrasts sensitivity after single 670nm exposures associated with enhanced mitochondrial function. Scientific Reports. doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-02311-1.

Science vs. Joe Rogan

In the on-going match between podcasting giant Joe Rogan and the scientific consensus, popularity is a dangerous fixer

Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. | 20 Nov 2021

“Lot of times, we’re drinking or we’re high, you know, and I say stupid shit.” Coming from a teenager, this statement may invoke memories of your own adolescence. But carried by the voice of then-53-year-old Joe Rogan defending his off-the-cuff, on-the-air remarks about COVID vaccines in young adults, it reeks of arrested development.

Rogan, whose CV includes the television shows NewsRadio and Fear Factor, is, by his own description, a “cage-fighting commentator” and a “dirty stand-up comedian.” But his influence on the health landscape can be felt the most through The Joe Rogan Experience, his long-form interview podcast now exclusively available on Spotify thanks to a $100 million deal.

And that influence is considerable given the scale of Rogan’s podcasting platform, which a few numbers can contextualize.

1920 and counting. That’s the number of episodes the show has released since its beginning eleven years ago, and that number goes up by three or four each week. The average length of these episodes is roughly 2.5 hours. It would take close to seven sleepless months to listen to them all.

28.7 million. That’s the reported number of views on the most recent show Rogan hosted with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

200 million. That’s the number of monthly downloads the show was asserting in 2019, before the move to Spotify. For this same year, the episodes still left on YouTube all have millions of views each, and they generated additional clicks through audio podcasting apps. This regularly put Rogan’s show above the total average prime time audiences for Fox News (2.5 million viewers), MSNBC (1.8 million viewers), and CNN (972,000 viewers). There is indirect evidence that his audience has shrunk since moving behind the great Spotify wall, but his reach still appears to be immense.

The Joe Rogan Experience often feels like being a fly on the wall in a teenager’s basement apartment. The parents are upstairs, watching Carlson, Maddow or Cooper, and we’re downstairs, listening in on private conversations that reveal mind-blowing facts about the world. These conversations, serpentine and unpredictable, fill the air of Rogan’s online and informal equivalent of a gentlemen’s club. Indeed, a whopping 88% of Rogan’s guests are men, as well as 71% of his listenership according to a MediaMonitors survey in 2020. The average age of his listeners according to the same survey is 24.

Rogan has an undeniable appeal to young men who are trying opinions and ideologies on for size. To them, social media may appear superficial and political commentators on American television may seem hopelessly biased. Rogan comes across as a neutral, curious, and relatable host sharing deep, unfiltered conversations with experts and celebrities. No artifice, no sound bites. Just Joe and his inquisitiveness.

Many of his shows feature mixed martial artists and comedians but others focus on health, and that is where his apparent neutrality crumbles and his inclinations become hazardous. Speaking to comedian Bill Burr about COVID-19 while smoking cigars, Rogan said, half-humorously, half-seriously, that wearing a mask was “for b*tches, it just is.” Testosterone is not in short supply on The Joe Rogan Experience. As Matthew Remski, co-host of the Conspirituality podcast, wrote about bro science, “in the rugged country of bros, there are no communities, but rather collections of homogenous, self-contained, self-responsible individuals.” And the gentlemen’s club of Rogan’s podcast has had a disreputable clientele of so-called “self-responsible individuals.”

Rogan platformed Dr. Andrew Weil, one of the kings of promoting unproven and disproven pseudomedical remedies, who ridiculed the idea that placebo effects needed to be ruled out from studies. For the record, they have to be subtracted, though, because they represent non-specific effects of everything but the intervention. However, Weil claimed enthusiastically that they should be ruled in because “that’s the meat of medicine, that’s pure healing from within.” This shows a stunning misunderstanding of scientific research.

Rogan also hosted Bret Weinstein, a former biology professor turned podcasting conspiracy theorist, and Dr. Pierre Kory, a critical care physician, for an emergency broadcast on the use of ivermectin for COVID-19 during which the taking of this antiparasitic drug was said to yield “near-perfect protection” against the disease. This is not the case.

Abigail Shrier was welcomed on the show to talk about her provocatively titled book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. The book promotes a made-up diagnosis, “rapid-onset gender dysphoria,” to breathe new life into the cyclical moral panic surrounding children. The website Science-Based Medicine, following the publication of an endorsement of the book by one of its editors, posted a number of articles addressing the multiple inaccuracies of the book, written by actual experts. Meanwhile, Rogan portrayed the care given to transgender people as “stepping in to a developing baby that’s only been alive for six years and shooting chemicals into its body […] to hormonally interact with their body in some sort of a random, Dr. Frankenstein sort of way.” To be this clueless beggars belief.

Being interested in nutrition, Rogan has also aired long conversations with people on the topic of diets. Perhaps the strangest of all was with Mikhaila Peterson, who is not a dietitian, claiming that a diet consisting exclusively of beef and salt cured her arthritis. There are many, many problems with this “carnivore diet,” and it baffles me that Peterson is someone Rogan would look to for insight on what to eat.

And then there’s Alex Jones. The shock jock has embraced every grand conspiracy theory invented by humanity, from the existence of a New World Order to “Hurricane Katrina was a test of FEMA concentration camps.” He was sued for defamation by the families of ten people killed in the Sandy Hook school mass shooting, as he had repeatedly alleged that the massacre was a false flag operation and that the victims’ families were actors. He recently lost all of these defamation suits. Jones has been Rogan’s guest four times.

Rogan does not necessarily endorse what his guests say—he’s just asking questions—but he bullhorns their pseudoscientific and conspiracy-laden views to millions of audience members. To Alex Jones, he said, “it’s f---ing dangerous to censor you.” He subsumes calls for responsible platforming under a general defence of free speech. “Censoring is bad,” goes the thinking, “therefore the best thing to do is to platform as many iconoclasts as possible, to make sure their claims reach the ears of millions of people who can then decide for themselves where the truth lies.” Which leads to Alex Jones telling tens of millions of people that “they” are coming to your house demanding a COVID test and if you don’t agree, “they” will arrest you. And although Rogan often pushes Jones for evidence on his claims, he has still platformed a paranoid lunatic (or a man who acts in this manner for profits) who once said that Hillary Clinton has personally murdered children through a pedophilia ring found in the non-existent basement of a pizza joint.

A colossal reach like Rogan’s requires maturity, especially in the middle of an infodemic. But in clinging to the teenage desire to hear things that’ll blow your mind, the podcaster with a golden megaphone broadcasts lies, fantasies, and bad medical advice.

Living on the cutting edge

Joe Rogan’s attraction to pseudoscience wasn’t born with COVID. Like so many people passionate about fitness, Rogan is always looking for an edge. He has promoted cryotherapy in the past, even posting a photo of himself inside a cryochamber on his personal Instagram account which has 13.5 million followers. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said this therapy has “very little evidence about its safety or effectiveness.” While the promoted claims may look scientific, they are based on a lot of hot air.

Rogan has also repeatedly publicized stem cell injections as miraculous treatments. They apparently completely healed his rotator cuff tear, and Rogan had Mel Gibson on to talk about how a stem cell treatment in Panama saved his 92-year-old father’s life, improving his thinking, his eyesight, “and other stuff […] that he would hate for me to talk about!” Anecdotes are not hard evidence, but the confessional atmosphere of the podcast gives these medical claims the weight of cutting-edge secrets. Make no mistake: stem cell research holds tremendous potential, but the current industry of stem cell tourism (and the growing creep of stem cell staycations) is built on scienceploitation. Its claims are unsubstantiated and the harms are very real.

The air of secrecy that surrounds these therapies—discovered through a personal network of would-be pioneers that Rogan’s status has allowed him to build—is also seen in the conspiracy theories he has embraced in the past. Moon hoaxes and Roswell aliens were frequent fodder in the early days of his podcast. One of his favourite guests is Graham Hancock, with seven appearances on the show, who wrote one of Rogan’s favourite books, Fingerprints of the Gods. In it, Hancock theorizes that an advanced civilization forgotten by historians existed in our distant past and was nearly wiped out, with survivors bringing their arcane knowledge to Egypt and the Americas. This kind of pseudoarchaeological hypothesis pushes all the right buttons: it’s revolutionary knowledge heretofore hidden from view and uncovered by a Galileo figure. This is heroin for the adolescent mind.

With COVID, Rogan’s habit for embracing pseudoscience and the rugged individualism that often puts him at odds with public health landed him in hot water with the media. COVID is no worse than the flu, he’d say. Ivermectin is a perfect storm against COVID: “extremely effective, extremely cheap, and generic.” And, infamously, if you’re a healthy 21-year-old, you don’t need to get the COVID vaccine. When confronted, Rogan simply says, “I’m not a doctor, I’m a f---ing moron.” But he’s a moron with influence.

A survey commissioned by The Washington Post revealed that Rogan’s listeners were significantly less likely to intend to vaccinate than those who do not regularly listen, with an 18% lower intent in February 2021. It would be foolish to infer that Rogan single-handedly swayed these people: many are drawn to him because of his libertarian tendencies and his suspicion of public health recommendations. But given the magnitude of his audience and its young average age, it would be equally foolish to pretend Rogan’s misinformed opinions have no effect. When quarterback Aaron Rodgers caught the disease, he took a cocktail of remedies, including ivermectin. Whose advice was he following? Joe Rogan’s.

Spotify, the company that exclusively platforms his podcast, says it will not allow “any inaccurate content on its podcasting platform,” which is ludicrous. First, audio content is notoriously challenging to moderate. Second, Rogan has proved to be too much of a draw for Spotify to risk their business relationship. Australian misinformer Pete Evans had his podcast removed by Spotify for “dangerous, false, deceptive, and misleading content about COVID-19.” Even though the same label could be applied to Rogan’s show, similar action has not been taken. Spotify did remove some episodes from its catalogue, including those with comedian Chris D’Elia (accused of soliciting nude photos from teenagers) and with far-right figures. But the COVID misinformation remains on the playlist for now.

The cycle of excitement

Whenever Joe Rogan is trending on social media, Dr. Danielle Belardo, a cardiologist, tweets out, “Joe Rogan is goop for men.” She is referring to Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness emporium, propped up by a foundation of pseudoscience. Indeed, Joe Rogan is a walking incubator for supplements. A fansite keeping close tabs on what the podcaster says reports that, during the pandemic, Rogan received weekly intravenous drips of vitamin C, zinc, glutathione, and NAD. At 40, he started testosterone replacement therapy. The site also lists a preposterous list of supplements Rogan has at least experimented with, from glucosamine to cannabidiol tincture, from quercetin to nootropics, including Onnit’s Alpha Brain, which the company started making it at Rogan’s suggestion and which he endorses. He says the supplement, which contains ingredients meant to increase levels of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, makes him mentally sharper. But while supplements can treat deficiencies, they don’t grant superpowers if you take more of them. Are the amounts in Alpha Brain enough to do anything? How do they interact together? The usual skepticism of the supplement industry should apply here. We are, after all, in the same territory as Alex Jones’ own Brain Force Plus.

There is another angle to the Rogan-Paltrow comparison: both hint at wealth being an important gateway to health. Rogan’s stack of supplements costs money. So does the private gym furnished with high-quality fitness and combat sport equipment. The Iron Neck, the glute-ham developer, the iron kettlebells with the ape faces sculpted into them, discussed on the air and Instagrammed for millions to salivate over, paint a familiar picture of aspirational wellness. Health is a personal choice that a multimillionaire can easily afford. Masks, after all, are for b*tches. But the metaphorical mask does slip when, despite a pantry full of supplements, Rogan did get COVID and did not trust his pantry to save him. He reached for the kitchen sink: monoclonal antibodies, ivermectin, the antibiotic azithromycin, prednisone, and extra drips of NAD and vitamins. Everything money could conjure up was used in the wake of, as he put it, “one bad day.”

Despite many of his critics calling Rogan a meathead, he’s not dumb. But his thinking is biased in ways that make pseudoscience look titillating. Faced with a new supplement or new intervention, his brain seems to lean on the same shortcuts. Is this new? Does it challenge the status quo? Has it not yet been endorsed by the medical establishment? Does it feel objective to me and well-reasoned? Is it recommended by a friend of mine, possibly an expert I’ve had on the show who’s cutting-edge? And are they being censored or criticized in some way? Consensus is not sexy when you’re attracted to innovation. Rogan wants secret knowledge from his rogue experts who can tell him what looks promising in the lab. He wants to beat the lab mice to it. And he’ll bank on his personal experience to decide if it works or not, even when he admits that he does so many things to improve his health, it’s hard to know if the umpteenth addition to the lot made a difference. But no worries because the cycle of excitement gets to start again with another shiny thing.

In the background of all this is an anti-establishment sentiment. Mainstream medicine is boring and too slow to pick up on novelty, is the message. The mainstream media attempts to control the narrative with lies. CNN, in fact, did lie about Rogan by claiming repeatedly that he had taken a horse dewormer. Ivermectin can be used to deworm horses but it can also be used in humans, and Rogan said he got human-grade ivermectin from a medical doctor, not a vet. What CNN did affects its credibility.

But you cannot sow distrust in mainstream establishments and not expect people to seek out an alternative. But is the alternative better? If the pharmaceutical industry puts money ahead of patients, any off-patent drug pushed by an even-keeled contrarian is a cure-all. If CNN is found to slant its coverage, Rogan’s audience should watch Tim Pool, an independent pundit with a heavily biased, faux-journalistic body of work who recently hosted both Rogan and Alex Jones. According to Rogan, the mainstream media is “a left-wing cult.” Are we supposed to turn a blind eye to the numerous problems with the alternatives because the mainstream sometimes misses the mark?

Rogan wants us to drift away from “the establishment” and listen to the siren song of its “freedom”-chanting critics. Its secrets are whispering to us. Joe Rogan’s popularity mesmerizes and suggests we must listen to him or miss out on the experimental magic. But the real secret may just be this: we don’t have to listen to him.

@CrackedScience

Here Be Homeopathic Chameleons

Pharmacies in Quebec started in 2019 to inform customers that homeopathy was not scientific. Where are we now, two years later?

Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. | 27 Nov 2021
Health and Nutrition
Pseudoscience


In the fight against pseudoscience, the idea that simply providing more information works every time has been questioned these last decades. The thinking used to be simplistic: when non-experts disagree with scientists, it must be because they lack the correct information. But as we have seen in the growing struggle against the anti-vaccination movement, feelings don’t care about facts. When your identity is shaped by pseudoscientific beliefs, you have made your brain more or less impervious to facts. But there is at least one pseudoscience where better information is still a powerful remedy: homeopathy.



FIGURE 1. Typical display of homeopathic products in the vitamins and supplements section of a Montreal pharmacy

Homeopathy is a chameleon in pharmacies. It has taken the look and shape of genuine medication and will easily fool the casual shopper. Multiple episodes of the consumer advocacy show CBC Marketplace have provided evidence that the average person cannot distinguish homeopathic cold and flu products from medicated ones when presented with a table spread. Even when asked point-blank to define homeopathy, the near-totality of polled Canadians can’t do it. In 2016, Health Canada conducted an online survey on consumer health products in 2,502 Canadians. Nearly half confused homeopathy with herbal products. Only 5% of respondents showed at least a partial understanding of homeopathy. Information can play a crucial role in changing people’s minds here.

When you go to the zoo, there is a sign announcing that the glass-fronted case in front of you contains chameleons. You can be on the lookout for them. Two years ago, the Province of Quebec got its own signs in pharmacy, warning people about the presence of these homeopathic chameleons. I had to wonder: were the signs still there?



FIGURE 2. Close-up of the optional sign by the ABCPQ, informing pharmacy consumers that homeopathy is not based on scientific evidence
Air guitars on aisle six

The running gag about homeopathy is that it is the air guitar of alternative medicine. At its core, it’s a retread of the Danish folktale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” in which a monarch, various officials and soon an entire town play along with a couple of swindlers’ claim that they are making the most sumptuous of imperial clothes which just so happen to be invisible.

In a nutshell, homeopathy was born out of dissatisfaction and coincidences. Two hundred years ago, when actual medicine was more likely to kill than heal you, a German doctor and translator by the name of Samuel Hahnemann predated infomercials by thinking that there had to be a better way. When he ingested a natural antimalarial agent and randomly developed a fever—one of the symptoms of malaria—he made an ill-judged inference that is still with us today: that if an ingredient causes the symptoms of a disease in a healthy person, they must be the cure to the disease itself. This is how coffee entered homeopathy’s hallowed halls as a potent treatment for insomnia.

Of course, Hahnemann was not completely off his rocker. He understood that the negative effects of these natural ingredients—the agitation, the vomiting, the intoxication—were not desirable: they had to be diluted down. So he added water or alcohol to them to dissolve and dilute them, repeatedly, over and over again, until the ingredient itself had often, unbeknownst to him, completely disappeared. For homeopaths, this dilution makes the solution more powerful because the solvent somehow (and defying everything we know about physical chemistry) retains the vitalistic essence of this ingredient. The final dilution can now be dropped onto a sugar pill and voilà! A harmless, noneffective homeopathic remedy is created that can be dressed up in the garbs of actual pharmaceutical products and sold to the masses. (“Harmless,” I should point out, only when the dilution is properly done. When it isn’t, you could be giving a dangerous product to your infant.)

And getting these homeopathic sugar pills and water syrups approved for sale is incredibly easy. Marketplace did it by sending Health Canada photocopies of an old book trumpeting how brilliant certain ingredients were to reduce fever in children. No clinical trial, no safety studies: just assurance by long-dead homeopaths that these natural ingredients, diluted out of existence, really did work. Health Canada got egg on its face and introduced a new labeling rule. To sell a child’s cough, cold and flu homeopathic product, the packaging must clearly state that “this claim is based on traditional homeopathic references and not modern scientific evidence.” But a Marketplace segment released last week shows parents inspecting homeopathic cough syrups for children and failing to see the notice until it is pointed out to them. Would a sign next to the homeopathic products on a pharmacy’s store shelf help?

In Quebec, this became reality two years ago.

Homeopathic chameleons with legs

To make a long story short, I called 150 pharmacies in Montreal in early 2019 to find out that at least two thirds of them carried a particularly egregious homeopathic flu remedy called Oscillococcinum (consisting of duck heart and liver diluted one part in one hundred… two hundred times in a row). A local journalist, Philippe Mercure, writing for La Presse, then visited 20 pharmacies in our city, and in the 19 that carried Oscillococcinum, asked the pharmacist if his bedridden friend with muscle aches and fever should take this homeopathic product. Seven said no, six were ambiguous, and six more recommended it. The Quebec Order of Pharmacists reminded its members that they could not endorse a pseudoscientific product like this without putting themselves in a precarious position regarding their professional ethics. Meanwhile, our association of pharmacy chains (ABCPQ) made signs explaining that “the effectiveness of homeopathic products is generally not supported by scientific evidence based data” and to “consult your pharmacist for details.” They were shipped to pharmacies across the province, who had the option to post them next to the sugar pills. (The whole story can be read here: parts one, two, and three.)

Last week’s Marketplace segment conducted a similar investigation to Mercure’s, visiting a total of ten pharmacists practicing in four major chains in Ontario. Six out of those ten recommended the homeopathic product the journalist questioned them about. The Ontario College of Pharmacists told Marketplace that they could not determine if rules were broken without their own investigation. Ontario could certainly use our signs, with maybe a few propped up behind the pharmacy counter to help the people in the white coats remember their science-based training.

But are the signs still there in Quebec? Pessimism got the better of me when the sign at the pharmacy I regularly go to disappeared during the pandemic. So in late October of this year, I visited 14 pharmacies that sell homeopathic products in four different parts of the island of Montreal (for the natives, I focused on the areas near Jean-Talon, Berri-UQAM, Guy-Concordia and Papineau metro stations). The pharmacies belonged to the chains Jean-Coutu, Proxim, and Pharmaprix (known as Shoppers Drug Mart outside of Quebec). And I was pleasantly surprised to see many of the little signs that could.



FIGURE 3. Signs seen at two different Montreal pharmacies in October 2021

In total, six of the 14 pharmacies I visited (43%) had at least one of these signs. I say “at least” because those little chameleons pretending to be medication have legs. Homeopathy can generally be found in up to three different sections of a pharmacy. There’s the section filled with vitamins and supplements. There’s the adult cold and flu aisle. And sometimes, there is a separate section for children’s cold and flu remedies. Some pharmacies posted the sign in one or two of these sections, but none had signs next to every homeopathic section. Occasionally, the sign was in the wrong section, presumably because homeopathy used to be stocked there and when they moved it, they forgot to move the sign.



FIGURE 4. Can you spot the homeopathic children’s products hiding next to actual medication? We highlighted the homeopathy with bright yellow marker.

To show what a real hodgepodge the situation is in Montreal, one pharmacy stocked homeopathic products in two sections: one had no sign in sight while the other was adorned with a stunning five signs!



FIGURE 5. Inconsistent signage at the same pharmacy. A) No sign next to the homeopathic products in the supplements section. B) Five signs in a separate homeopathic section of the same store.]

The future of homeopathy in pharmacies

The situations in Quebec described by our office and by La Presse and in Ontario revealed by CBC Marketplace make a few recommendations abundantly clear.

We need better education in pharmacy schools. Pharmacists need to understand the foundational principles of homeopathy: that like is claimed to cure like, that dilutions are claimed to make ingredients more powerful, and that most homeopathic products do not contain a single atom of the original substance. It may feel like teaching chemists about alchemy, but homeopathy is being sold in pharmacies and pharmacists should know what it is so they can properly inform shoppers. If pharmacy students were aware that there is such a thing as homeopathic X-rays meant to treat “distressing pain,” they would better understand both the lunacy and potential danger of using homeopathy to treat anything.



FIGURE 6. Homeopathic X-ray granules for distressing pain.

Health Canada needs to do its part too. When their homeopathy approval process was shown to be laughable and they were embarrassed on national television, they took the smallest possible corrective step: a notice would need to be visible on the packaging, but only for children’s cough, cold and flu remedies. Are homeopathic claims on adult products based on modern scientific evidence? Why did they escape from the change in labeling? As Health Canada has been deliberating on further changes for years now, I can only hope they come to the correct decision very soon. All homeopathic products should clearly mention that they are not based on scientific evidence. Another suggestion: if the Latin names for the once-present ingredients were forced to be printed in English, it might clarify a few things. If you picked up pills for insomnia and noticed that the ingredient was “coffee,” you might walk over to the pharmacy counter for a few explanations.

We could also use more signs in pharmacies and a more consistent posting of these signs. Other provinces may want to take notice of what our association of pharmacy chains did, and skeptical organizations and science communication bodies in other countries may want to try and reproduce the chain of events that led to these signs existing in the first place.

What reassures me is that the information deficit model, which states that the gulf between scientists and other citizens on certain issues can be paved over by good information, can really work for homeopathy. Parents don’t want their children to suffer, so it makes sense that they would gravitate towards cough syrups and granules that are 100% natural and that promise a complete absence of side effects. But likewise, parents don’t want to be deceived by sugar granules with medical aspirations. Clearly and calmly explaining homeopathy to them can make a big difference.

As cold and flu season begins, be prepared to spot the chameleons hiding on pharmacy shelves. They look just like regular pharmaceutical products but if you squint, you’ll see the word “homeopathy” somewhere on the packaging.

And remember this: if the label says homeopathy, it’s not trustworthy.

Take-home message:
-Homeopathy is a fake medicine based on the principles that something that gives a symptom in a healthy person will cure it in someone who is ill; that the more you dilute something, the stronger it becomes; and that the solvent used for the dilution somehow remembers the original ingredient”
-In 2019, the Quebec association of pharmacy chains (ABCPQ) printed optional signs for pharmacies to post next to homeopathic products, informing consumers that homeopathy was not based on scientific evidence
-In late 2021, visits to 14 pharmacies in Montreal that sell homeopathy revealed that signs are posted in some pharmacies, but the signage is highly inconsistent, and no pharmacy visited had the sign next to every homeopathy display in their store

@CrackedScience

In the quantum realm, not even time flows as you might expect

by University of Bristol

Artistic illustration of a gondolier trapped in a quantum superposition of time flows. 

Credit: © Aloop Visual & Science, University of Vienna, Institute for Quantum Optics and

 Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

A team of physicists at the Universities of Bristol, Vienna, the Balearic Islands and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI-Vienna) has shown how quantum systems can simultaneously evolve along two opposite time arrows—both forward and backward in time.

The study, published in the latest issue of Communications Physics, necessitates a rethink of how the flow of time is understood and represented in contexts where quantum laws play a crucial role.

For centuries, philosophers and physicists have been pondering the existence of time. Yet, in the classical world, our experience seems to extinguish any doubt that time exists and goes on. Indeed, in nature, processes tend to evolve spontaneously from states with less disorder to states with more disorder, and this propensity can be used to identify an arrow of time. In physics, this is described in terms of 'entropy', which is the physical quantity defining the amount of disorder in a system.

Dr. Giulia Rubino from the University of Bristol's Quantum Engineering Technology Labs (QET labs) and lead-author of the publication, said:

"If a phenomenon produces a large amount of entropy, observing its time-reversal is so improbable as to become essentially impossible. However, when the entropy produced is small enough, there is a non-negligible probability of seeing the time-reversal of a phenomenon occur naturally.

"We can take the sequence of things we do in our morning routine as an example. If we were shown our toothpaste moving from the toothbrush back into its tube, we would be in no doubt it was a rewinded recording of our day. However, if we squeezed the tube gently so only a small part of the toothpaste came out, it would not be so unlikely to observe it re-entering the tube, sucked in by the tube's decompression."

The authors of the study, under the lead of Professor Caslav Brukner of the University of Vienna and the IQOQI-Vienna, applied this idea to the quantum realm, one of whose peculiarities is the principle of quantum superposition, according to which if two states of a quantum system are both possible, then that system can also be in both states at the same time.

"Extending this principle to time's arrows, it results that quantum systems evolving in one or the other temporal direction (the toothpaste coming out of or going back into the tube), can also find themselves evolving simultaneously along both temporal directions.

"Although this idea seems rather nonsensical when applied to our day-to-day experience, at its most fundamental level, the laws of the universe are based on quantum-mechanical principles. This begs the question of why we never encounter these superpositions of time flows in nature," said Dr. Rubino.

Dr. Gonzalo Manzano, co-author from the University of the Balearic Islands, said: "In our work, we quantified the entropy produced by a system evolving in quantum superposition of processes with opposite time arrows. We found this most often results in projecting the system onto a well-defined time's direction, corresponding to the most likely process of the two. And yet, when small amounts of entropy are involved (for instance, when there is so little toothpaste spilled that one could see it being reabsorbed into the tube), then one can physically observe the consequences of the system having evolved along the forward and backward temporal directions at the same time."

Aside from the fundamental feature that time itself might not be well-defined, the work also has practical implications in quantum thermodynamics. Placing a quantum system in a superposition of alternative time's arrows could offer advantages in the performance of thermal machines and refrigerators.

Dr. Rubino said: "Although time is often treated as a continuously increasing parameter, our study shows the laws governing its flow in quantum mechanical contexts are much more complex. This may suggest that we need to rethink the way we represent this quantity in all those contexts where quantum laws play a crucial role."

"Quantum superposition of thermodynamic evolutions with opposing time's arrows" is published in Communications Physics.How does a quantum particle see the world?

More information: Quantum superposition of thermodynamic evolutions with opposing time's arrows, Communications Physics (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s42005-021-00759-1

Journal information: Communications Physics 

Provided by University of Bristol 

Latest Emissions Report From US EPA Shows Why We Need Stronger Regulations

Originally published by Union of Concerned Scientists, The Equation.
By Dave Cooke

EPA just put out its annual report on the emissions and fuel use from passenger cars and trucks. The good news: vehicles are more efficient than ever before, with the average vehicle achieving 25.4 miles per gallon on-road and every class of vehicle at a record high. The downside to all this progress, however, is that the regulations have been so lax that manufacturers are at nowhere near the levels of efficiency originally envisioned by the program, and yet industry is sitting on a massive bank of credits that could continue to delay progress.

EPA is getting ready to finalize new 2023-2026 regulations — here’s what I’m hoping they take away from their own latest report.
EPA Rules work (as designed)

The first thing that EPA should recognize is that the rules are working, more or less as intended (more on that below). We are at record-high levels of fuel economy across the board, which is great for consumers no matter what type of vehicle they are looking for.

This is in strong contrast to the 1990s-early 2000s, when regulations were flat and fuel economy got worse. What changed? Standards got tougher.

While standards stagnated through the 1990s and early 2000s, fuel economy and emissions from new vehicles got worse. Increasing fuel economy standards beginning in the early 2000s for light trucks, and joint fuel economy and emissions standards for all passenger vehicles beginning in 2012 have dramatically reduced emissions, but we have a long way to go. (Figure: EPA)

To effectively address climate change, 100% of new passenger cars and trucks sold in 2035 should be electric. EPA has the power to make that happen, with binding regulations that work.
Gasoline-powered vehicles can do so much more

Long-term regulations need to be built on the electric vehicles that are both 1) needed to address climate change and 2) seeing major investments to scale up sales according to major manufacturers. But as we push that transition forward, more needs to be done to make the internal combustion engine more efficient. The vast majority of sales over the next decade are still going to be powered by gasoline — but EPA’s report shows there are still plenty of options on the table to reduce fuel consumption by those vehicles.


From turbocharged engines and direct injection (GDI) to stop-start/hybridization and cylinder deactivation (CD), there is a wealth of technologies in the fleet to reduce fuel use. However, few manufacturers have broadly applied these multiple strategies across their entire fleet. This indicates a wealth of opportunity for even further reductions, just from so-called “off the shelf” technologies, in addition to those continued advancements not shown on this chart. (Figure: EPA)

Manufacturers are nowhere near exhausting even the most obvious, off-the-shelf engine technologies. Barely half of engines are even using direct injection, less than half have some form of stop-start/hybridization to reduce idle fuel waste, and an extremely small share of the fleet is taking advantage of cylinder deactivation, which can “right size” an engine in real-time to maximize its efficiency.

On top of these long-known strategies that have yet to be made ubiquitous, there are plenty of continued incremental advancements like new high-energy ignition systems that replace the conventional spark plug with more efficient burn strategies.

EPA should look at its data on technology deployment to date and conclude that its rules can push much further, and fast.

A glut of credits continues to make EPA compliance way too easy

Sadly, one of the clearest things that EPA should learn from this latest report is why its current regulations aren’t doing enough to drive innovation in the industry. The industry is sitting on a glut of credits that can be used in lieu of technology deployment, and manufacturers are doing just that.

Gifting manufacturers a massive credit bank to draw from has resulted in significant delay in meeting the year-over-year requirements under EPA’s program. While that means manufacturers are well-prepared for a large increase in stringency in 2023, EPA should be setting future standards aimed at drawing this bank down and ensuring that manufacturers are responding to standards with the emissions reductions so badly needed. (Figure: EPA)

In the near-term, EPA can point to this massive bank of credits as a clear reason why the industry is well-prepared for a steep increase in standards for 2023. But in the long run, EPA needs to focus on ensuring that its standards have much less wiggle room and are built not on massive credit giveaways but real reductions in global warming emissions.
Now is not the time to be timid

Regulations have pushed manufacturers to offer the most efficient vehicles ever, year after year. But there is still so much more that can and must be done to address climate change.

EPA’s latest report shows the successes of its program, but the data also points to an opportunity for significantly tightening the stringency of the program in the 2023–2026 period as industry transitions from the weak regulations of the previous administration towards what is necessary to address climate change. This becomes even more critical for the transportation sector, now the largest source of global warming emissions in the United States, particularly given the failure of COP26 to meaningfully prioritize transitioning away from fossil fuels.

The science clearly indicated that EPA’s proposal was far too weak, and its latest report on the state of the industry only furthers that evidence. Regulations can work to make industry do better, but we must make the regulations work better if we want industry to address climate change.

EPA Administrator Regan said that the agency will “follow the law, follow the science and build the strongest technical record” and will finalize the rule accordingly. Well, the data is clear — we can and must do more, not just through 2026 but beyond.